


Alone, With You

by cruxcantare



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Archive Warnings just hedging my bets, Canon Compliant, M/M, Mentions of Prisoner Abuse, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Past Character Death, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Religious Undertones, Slow Burn, Surreal, Trauma, Violence, mentions of torture, soul stone AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 03:44:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14803737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruxcantare/pseuds/cruxcantare
Summary: Sam's pretty sure they're dead. Bucky disagrees. But whatever this is, it isn't living.





	1. Chapter 1

Sam swears he can hear Rhodey shouting his name.

It grows fainter each time. He opens his mouth to respond but he can't hear what he says. Sam drags himself up to a seated position, but suddenly he cannot see the battlefield. Wakanda fades before him. Could the war had been a nightmare? Was he waking up?

_Rhodey!_

He cannot feel the sharp ground beneath him. The dirt no longer rolls under his fingertips. The weight of his wings seemed gone, and he wondered if he was naked. Had he been in bed before Bruce called them? Had he, Steve, and Nat been huddled for warmth, Steve's naturally hot body helping as they camped under the stars? Were they in one of Natasha's safe houses?

_Nat!_

He couldn't see, he wasn't even sure if he turned his head back. The screams, the rapid fire of Wakanda's weapons, all gone. The whoosh of the air is gone. The smell of bodies had followed Sam since Afghanistan, and yet now he cannot smell a thing. The sudden absence of any smell, good or bad, freaks him out. This isn’t right. Something isn’t right.

_Steve?_

Sam's first thought is that he died.

What an end, though. Sam had been shot at, had fallen out of the sky, had faced beings with all sorts of strange powers. It took a gigantic megalomaniac with universe ending power to do it. Were Steve and Natasha and Rhodey and the others still fighting? Would his body be forgotten in such a glorious place as Wakanda, or would his mother be able to bury him next to his father?

Sam didn't mean to leave them alone. Yet Sam was always the man in the sky, unable to save anyone but himself. Maybe for once, it was his time to die alone. Penance.

Sam blinks.

This isn't Wakanda.

The sky is blue above him, yet he can no longer make out the barrier. There are no trees. The ground beneath him is almost grossly hot, and Sam hisses as he puts his hands on the ground, pushing himself to a seated position. It's... a blacktop. Sam looks forward, yet all he can see is more blacktop. No buildings, no people, no animals... _nothing._

"RHODEY!" Sam forces himself to his feet, circling around. _Nothing._ Nothing on the horizon. "NATASHA?" Sam walks forward slowly, trying to find anything. Anything at all to tell him where he was. He'll figure out the why later. "STEVE?"

Sam starts to consider maybe it was everyone else who died. Maybe this is Thanos' endgame.

Either way, he dies alone.

Penance.

***

Sam has no way to tell how much time has passed. He stopped yelling names some time ago, accepting that it was fruitless. There wasn’t even an anthill or a passing fly, much less an actual person. The scenery never changed. an endless sea of black and blue, no matter how far he walked. It cannot have been that long—Sam hasn't yet taken a break, nor has he felt hungry—and yet it feels endless.

Hell. Hell is blacktop.

Sam had been raised Christian of course, but he was never really sold on the bible, and the appearance of a Norse small g god on the news had made him wonder what was ahead. But whatever this was, it couldn't be heaven. There was no way this was heaven. Maybe there was no heaven.

Sam's still wearing clothes, yet they're not the clothes he was in on the battlefield. His exo-7 is gone. A dark green shirt, black pants, sneakers. What use would clothes be in the afterlife any way? He can't be dead. Then again, why would Thanos change his outfit?

Sam stops for a moment, breathes. Maybe he should stop walking straight? And yet he had to be closer to _something_ now, didn't he? Something real. Something made the clothes on his back, someone paved the endless road. He circles around once, twice, looking for any kind of marker of where he is.

Sam blinks. A flash of red. His eyes move upward and he sees the flap of wings. It's a bird. Maybe they got raptured together.

It's irrational, but he follows the bird. If anything, Sam's grateful for the company.

***

The sun hasn't changed position, and yet the walking feels endless. Sam's feet aren't tired yet, but he's sang every song he knows in his head. This cannot be Earth.

"You got any idea where we're at, birdie?"

A flap of the wings, and Sam almost convinces himself that means something.

"Whose there?" 

Sam twists at the sound, looking for the speaker. It's both familiar and foreign, Sam unable to place where he's heard it before. He looks back up at the bird, because that stupid red bird is the only thing around, and he waits for more.

Sam's going mad.

 "Swear I heard something."

Madness might be all he has.

"Hello?" Sam lets out, a trial balloon.

"You hear me?"

Sam makes himself dizzy trying to find the voice. He still cannot grasp whether he knows it or not. His throat scratches and he wants to scream.

That’s when he falls.

His back doesn’t meet black top; rather, now he cannot see much at all. The bright world is now a hazy gray, his body shivering from the sudden cold. Snow. He’s in the snow. Something’s still tugging on his ankles and dragging him through. Sam cannot see what has ahold of him; his legs are in the air but the snow seems to cloud his tormentor. Sam tries to force himself to wriggle, to fight, but his body feels heavy. His legs, his arms, neither responding to his thoughts.

A flash of deep red amongst the white catches his attention and it takes him a moment to realize what the streaking ribbon is. Blood. His blood, staining the snow. His blood, creating a trail, coming from where his left arm should be. Everything below the elbow, gone.

Oh god, oh _fuck_.

Sam desperately tries again, to kick, to writhe, to scream. When did he lose his arm? How didn’t he feel that? In his mind, he’s screaming for Steve, for Nat, for Rhodey, for his mom and dad. His mouth won’t open. His legs won’t kick.

His time to die alone. Penance.

“Sam? Fuck, Sam!”  
He recognizes the voice this time, but he can’t say his name. Sam’s heart drops and he wonders if his captors will take him too or if they’ll kill him.

“Sam! Sam!”

He feels fingers press under his armpits; one cold and smooth, the other warm and calloused. A yank, and the hold on his ankles gives, his legs falling to the floor. He can feel the snow seep into his socks. Sam sits, though the arms still tug him upward.

“Wait.” He forces out. “Wait, stop…” He tests his left leg, then his right, shaking them. A breath, and then another, trying to make sure he can truly speak again.  “My arm, what happened to my…”

Sam turns his head to the left, looking for the blood. All he sees is white.

“Your arm?” Bucky Barnes kneels, taking his left arm into his hands. “Let me see.” Bucky’s hands slide down Sam’s arm, over his elbow, down his forearm. Resting at his wrist. Sam could’ve sworn, it was gone, it was…

"There’s nothing wrong with your arm.” Bucky squeezes by his wrist. "Least nothing I can see."

Sam chokes before lunging at Bucky, holding him close. Head on his wet shoulder. Bucky is anything but a miracle, but Sam’s never been happier to see him. It doesn’t take long for Bucky’s arms to go around him as well, pulling him closer.

“What happened? I saw Steve, something weird was happening, and I was suddenly here…”

Sam shook his head. He didn’t know what to say.

“I thought maybe this was the Jabari Land, but I’ve been walking alone for a while, and I haven’t seen anything but snow. I was beginning to think I died. Judging by Steve’s face, I thought I was a goner.” Bucky is talking more than Sam’s ever heard him speak. Most of their visits had Bucky in cryogenic sleep; the ones he was awake for, maybe he might have been talkative when it was just him and Steve, but around Sam and Natasha he was quiet but polite. “But I can’t be dead if you’re here, right? Where are we?”

Sam shakes his head again. He didn’t even know anything weird was happening until Wakanda disappeared before his eyes. He swallows before speaking, still afraid to find his voice gone. “I didn’t even end up here first. Black top, it was just black top. Same as you, didn’t see anything. Least it wasn’t snowing.”

“Then how’d you get here?”

“Fell.”

“Fell?”

“I can’t explain it either.”

They pull apart, and Sam looks around. The snow falling all around them. Bucky’s hair, shoulders, were all peppered with flakes; his hair and clothes wet. Bucky also wasn’t wearing what he disappeared in, but this Sam recognized. There was a replica of this very outfit in the Smithsonian collection.

“Sergeant.” Sam forces a smile and salutes him. Bucky laughs, shaking his head.

“I feel like I belong in a museum, dressed like this.” Only Bucky’s hair and the metal hand peeking out of the blue coat suggest that this isn’t 1940s Bucky Barnes. Bucky scans Sam’s body. “I remember this. You… you were dressed like this when you and Steve came for me. Romania.”

“Was I?” Sam doesn’t remember what he wore. Two years seems like forever ago, after running with Steve and Nat for so long, unsure where was safe or if safe was even on the menu for the three of them. But it probably didn’t feel like two years to Bucky. He’d been frozen for a large part of it.

“I remember that day much better than I’d like to.” Bucky stands, before offering his arms to Sam. Sam’s eyes linger on Bucky’s metal arm before reaching out, grasping his forearms. Letting himself be pulled up. He tried to think of an explanation for what was going on but none came to him. “I think if I found you we can find other people. Maybe if we keep looking we’ll find something that tells us what this all is.”

“Maybe we’ll find a fire and a roof. I’m not exactly dressed for a snow storm.”

Bucky nods. “Why don’t you take my coat?”

Sam’s not proud enough to say no in a snow storm.


	2. Chapter 2

Walking with Bucky is better than walking with a bird. Walking with Bucky is _not_ enough to mitigate walking through the snow.

Bucky’s coat is a little tight on Sam but it helps with the weather. It smells, and Sam wonders how often Bucky washed it in the 40s. Sometimes, Sam’s foot hits a particularly deep spot, his leg into the snow up to his knee. Sometimes, Sam hits a slick spot, and only Bucky’s arm shooting out to grasp his forearm keeps him from falling into the snow. Sam’s about 70% as good as Bucky at catching him before he slips, and Bucky face plants right into the untouched, sparkling white blanket beneath them.

Sam can’t help but laugh, until a snowball hits him square in the shoulder.

“So, clearly Thanos did this to us.” Sam stopped clearing snow off his body some time ago. His hands grow numb when he does, and the best he can do is ball up his fists and try to push them under the blue sleeves. At this point he’s practically a snowman. He wonders if Steve or Nat or Rhodey are somewhere in this snow, wandering around looking for them as well. “But… what did he do to us? Why?”

“No idea.”

“You think we’re dead?”  
“We’re not dead, Sam.” Yet they’re in the same predicament Sam was in before, on the black top… all this walking and nothing changes. No one else pops up. “Why would dead people get cold?”

“You kidding me? Drops below 32, Wilsons stay the fuck home.”

“No one told me the Falcon was a big chicken.”

“I don’t know how it was in the 40s, but in this millennium birds fly south for winter.”

Bucky smiles, and Sam forces a small one of his own. If they were dead, Bucky would have to face that soon. Sam isn’t even sure he’s facing it well. Maybe he could have if it were just him, but now that Bucky is here, he wants to believe that they aren’t dead. That Sam’s overreacting and there is an explanation. Just one he hasn’t yet thought of.

“Maybe he teleported us somewhere?”

A worthy explanation. He did have the tesseract. And from what Sam knew of it from the museum and Steve’s long, pained rants about how he wished he’d found a way to make it disappear for good, it allowed a Hydra ship to fly absurdly fast. It created a hole over Manhattan for an alien force to attack. But why would Thanos just send them away? No, Sam has faced plenty of his types, and no one whose purpose was wiping out life would teleport them away. And how did Sam get here?

_Maybe we’re dead._

Then where’s everyone else? Where’s….

“Hey.” Sam stops, looking around. Bucky stops when he does, realizing it perhaps even before him. “When did the snow stop falling?”  
It isn’t accurate to say it the snow stopped. Not when they were surrounded by thousands of tiny snowflakes, frozen in place around them. They shine without a light source, almost from within. A brilliant golden color plays over each snowflake, going from white to a deep orange Sam’s not ever sure he’s seen before. Bucky reaches out with his metal arm, and the flakes move aside, as if he could push them away.

The ones around Bucky begin to grow and shrink. Some become the size of golf balls, only to shrink back down. Sam’s mesmerized by the colors. He doesn’t move, not when he’s unsure what the snowflakes are going to do. He blinks, realizing he sees faces in the flakes when they’re at their biggest. They almost go too fast for Sam to get a grasp of who he’s seeing, instead catching a large mustache, leering eyes, or crinkles at the corners of warm smiles.

Except the next time he sees a face, it’s Steve’s. All he has is a moment, but he only needs a moment to recognize him. Sam reaches out for the golden snowflake, trying to touch Steve before he disappears. The sight of him makes Sam’s stomach feel heavy; god, let Steve be alive. If any of them deserved a happy death it was Steve, Steve who had already gotten to die alone and frozen.

“What is this?” Bucky’s voice shakes. Sam wishes he had an answer. His touch does not stop the snowflake from shrinking, and this time, in his hand, there’s an image of the Wakandan princess herself.

“Should we keep moving?”

Bucky reaches for his arm. His cold, wet hand wraps around Sam’s forearm. “Whatever this is, we move together.”

Sam doesn’t have a better plan. He just nods, this time watching the face of a handsome black man grow within the light.

“One, two, three.”

They take a step, and they fall.

Bucky’s grip on his arm falters as they fall through the snow. Sam’s arms flail out, reaching for Bucky’s. He can feel metal fingers slide against the tips of his own, but his hand grasps at air. _Air_? The white breaks, and Sam realizes he’s looking up at clouds. They’re falling from the sky. The sun nearly blinds him as he desperately reaches up, reaches for where he thinks Bucky is. He can’t watch another man fall out the sky. He can’t.

“Sam!”

“Buck!”

They’re falling from too high, too fast. They’re going to die. If they’re not already dead, they’re going to die.

A hand wraps around his forearm, and Sam instinctively wraps his hand around the wrist. He lifts his other arm as he feels himself pulled closer. Sam’s hand inches up further, to a safer grip. He looks up and blinks, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing.

“Sam, I need you to tell me how this works.”

Bucky has his wings.

No, not Sam’s wings now that he looks at them. They’re the original model, but Sam knows his exo-7 inch by inch. These have to be _Riley’s_ wings. Shielding him from the sun. Smoke coming out of them. He doesn’t need to see where the smoke is coming from; he sees the melted metal in his dreams enough. And sometimes when he’s awake too.

“Sam, Sam, please. I need you to tell me how to work this.”

“I’ve never really explained before…”

“Sam, I need you to try now.” Riley’s wings. Riley’s wings from when he fell. “Sam!”

“You can’t.” He mouths. He’s not sure how he’s sure, but they’re going to crash. They’re going to crash like Riley did, except Riley was alone, and Sam’s dragging Bucky down with him.

“Sam, tell me how to work this now!”

Sam tries to look beyond Bucky. For himself. For the guy that survived, desperately trying to catch up to Riley. But instead, he sees a flash of red, a bird dive bombing like they are. Faster.

“Sam!”

Sam looks down, eyes following the red wings. They don’t slow down. No, the bird keeps flying straight towards the ground, and Sam forces himself to watch. He’s not sure what to expect, but he still feels breathless as the red dot disappears into the ground.

“We gotta crash.”

“Sam, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“You trust me?” Sam doesn’t wait for an answer. It sounds crazy, even to Sam. But those are Riley’s wings, and they will not save them. But that bird led him to Bucky and he knows that the bird is leading him now. It’s a guess but after everything a guess is all he has. “We have to crash. It’s the only way.”

“Only way to what?”

Sam has no answer.

“Are you… Okay! Okay, _fuck_ , okay, I trust you.”

Sam looks up at Bucky’s face. If he looks down at the ground, he’ll lose his nerve. If he looks down at the ground, he’ll see Riley. A breath, nodding, shutting his eyes, and waiting for the impact.

Instead, he feels water splash around him.

His back hits the water forcefully, Bucky’s body crushing into his. He gasps and that’s enough to feel the water begin to seep in. They both begin to try to swim together as they sink, legs knocking against each other’s as they attempt to push up. Sam motions for Bucky to ditch the exo, but Bucky doesn’t seem to notice and Sam can’t even make out the wings on his back anymore.

His legs dolphin kick behind him as he sweeps the water back, trying to follow the outline of the sun. He’s already swallowed enough water, and he’s not ready to drown. He refuses to drown. He’s imagined his death thousands of times since he lost Riley, and none of those deaths were in a godforsaken body of water.

Sam gasps as he breaks the surface, choking on the water. A couple coughs to spit it out. His arms work to keep him up, treading water as he spots Bucky standing a couple feet from him, wringing out his hair. As he swims forward, he reaches out his hand to feel where whatever Bucky’s standing on starts. He can’t feel a thing.

“Just keep moving,” Bucky says. And Sam’s learning not to question, even as his knees suddenly scrape against a rocky surface. With a groan, he forces himself to stand. He looks down and sees the pebbles, the glass. There wasn’t ground there just seconds ago. None of this was there just seconds ago… a shoreline, mere feet away. The tall plants. Sam knows where they are, and he has a feeling Bucky does too. Or at least, what where they are looks like.

“We’re really dead, aren’t we?”

“We’re not dead, and I need you to stop saying we are.”

The Potomac river slides over their ankles, small waves. “We just fell through some snow into the sky and landed in a river.” Sam swallows. “Maybe it’s just me, huh? Maybe I’m just seeing you…”

“Sam, it’s me.” Bucky shakes his head. “How do you know you’re not just my delusion?”

Sam shakes his head, trying to will it all away. Make sense of it all. If Bucky is a delusion, he’s an annoying one. “This is hell. This is fucking hell…”

“Sam this isn’t hell. You’re insane if you think you’re in hell.”

“Why? What exactly has happened to us since this started that makes you think this isn’t hell?” For a moment, Bucky seems to consider it, but then he turns away. Towards the shoreline. Sam follows his stare to land, trying to brace himself for whatever comes next, but all he sees are the plants.

“I found you.”

Neither Sam nor Bucky take their eyes off the shoreline. He can feel the corners of his eyes burn, but he can’t. Not in front of Bucky. Whatever this is, Sam’s not sure he can take much more of it.

“I don’t know what’s going on, Sam, but I can handle that until we find our way back. Can you?”

Sam nods. He understands the meaning. If they’re dead, Sam’s got nothing to lose. If they’re alive, Sam’s no help believing they’re dead. “I guess if we’re going to get through this, we’re going to have to, huh?”


	3. Chapter 3

“Have you had to piss at all since we’ve got here?”

“Nope. I haven’t been hungry either.”

Sam and Bucky stayed on the shore, figuring whatever was next would happen once they started wandering again. After the snow, sitting on a bank in DC seemed wonderful. Sam took off Bucky’s jacket to escape the moisture. His back was flat on the ground as he looked up at the clouds. This isn’t even close to the worst bed he’s had in his time, and he’s sure it’s the same for Bucky. Bucky followed soon after, a couple inches of space between them. “Maybe it’s one of the stones,” Sam offers, “Maybe no time has passed at all, and we’re just asleep in Wakanda.”

“No, something happened to me. You didn’t see Steve’s face.”

“Maybe you passed out in front of him.”

“Maybe.” Still, Bucky sounds doubtful. Sam wishes they were done with maybes. Sam wants things to make sense. Sam wants to go home and put the stupid Accords drama behind him. Sam wants to see his family, and his friends, and the guys at the VA. He wants to go to that greasy diner by his job and have a slice of that chocolate cream pie again. With their coffee, one milk and one sugar.

“Sorry we dragged you into war.” Bucky turns to look at him. “I dunno, you seemed peaceful…”

“Doubt the giant purple alien trying to end the world was going to spare me if I stuck with my goats.”

“So you admit we’re dead.”

“We’re not dead, shut up.”

Bucky's state of denial is almost enough to bring Sam back there. Perhaps the only thing keeping him from it entirely were the faces in the strange snowflakes. Sam didn't know all of them; no, those had to be for Bucky. But they aren't eating, aren't drinking unless almost drowning counts, aren't resting. Whatever this is, it isn't living.

"Maybe we should go to my house."

"What, you think your house is here?"

"If this is DC, my house can't be far." Sam thinks about the last two places they've been, how there was _nothing_. Yet this is the first time the environment has felt familiar since... well, since the business with the Accords. Sam hasn't settled in one place in the years since Lagos. He, Natasha, and Steve ran all over the world, taking on larger scale threats while basically camping. He’d said the hotels weren’t exactly five star, but then again the places they’ve slept couldn’t exactly be found on expedia. They'd barely spent any time in Wakanda, and yet that's likely the place Sam has seen the most of in two years. There were a multitude of reasons they kept going back, but the big one was checking in on Bucky, both asleep awake.

For Steve, it was a necessity of course. Those visits after Bucky woke up probably brightened Steve up more than anything. It took a while for Sam to realize that they meant something to him too. He’d given up two years of his life to a missing persons case, and Sam needed to see it was worthwhile. That the Bucky Steve believed in was real, and that he’d gotten a second chance not every soldier gets to have. That he made the most of that second chance, something some soldiers, Sam thinks, his stomach growing heavy, never manage to do.

"You know what? You were right about crashing, and I don't have a better idea." Bucky shrugs. "Might be nice to see your house. After all, you've seen mine."

***

Sam knows the direction, and yet DC grows entirely less familiar as they get into the city. The streets Sam has run so often are entirely empty. No cars, no people, not even a pigeon or those godforsaken geese. The buildings warp, leaning left and right, seeming to tumble into one another. Neither he nor Bucky stop. If they look too long, they'll find yet another thing wrong about it, a building out of place. The traffic lights are there, but they have clocks on them, shining red, yellow, and green. The slight ticking is the only thing they can hear when they’re not talking. They're the only two things that feel real. Even Sam's clothes or Bucky's jacket tied around his waist even feel fleeting. Here today, gone in a second.

"Sure you still want to go home, Sam?"

Despite the tension in his muscles, Sam nods. There are no signs, no mailboxes, no trees. There's no guarantee his house is even his house here. Yet he hasn't been home in two years, and Sam wants to go home. It'll all make sense if Sam just goes home.

When they're on his street, he feels Bucky's metal hand hook his elbow, tugging him close. "Stay nearby," he says softly, staring up at the sky.

Sam follows Bucky's eyes. There, he sees the red bird circling overhead, wings stretched out. The wings aren't flapping at all. Oh. Sam could almost laugh, yet in this situation, he gets being afraid of a bird. "It's okay." Bucky's eyebrows crease, growing closer together. "I think the bird's on our side."

"Sam."

"It lead me to you. And showed me we were supposed to crash."

Bucky’s face turns red, and Sam’s not sure what’s worse, Bucky’s reaction to the bird or his own. His mouth drops open and closes, pointing up at the sky. "The _bird_ told you that we should plummet out the sky."

"Is that so much weirder than falling through the snow and out the sky?"

Bucky’s right hand goes to his forehead, fingers rubbing his temples shakes. "I haven't decided yet. Don't go crazy on me, Sam."

"I'm hoping I'm not."

Bucky's hand remains on his arm as they walk, the bird flying ahead of them towards Sam's house. If the bird turned off in another direction, Sam wasn't sure what he would do. Yet the bird did not veer off path. The bird begins to descend, flying right through Sam's sliding door.

"Think we can do that?"

Sam doesn't want to find out. No, instead he wants to walk through his door and fall on his couch.

"Hey Sam. If what we find isn't what you left behind..."

Sam reaches his hand out.

The door disappears right in front of them. A black smoke comes first, and the door turns to ash, crumbling right before them.

It isn't his house.

"Sam..."

Sam pulls away from Bucky, following the bird as it hops down the red-carpeted room. It's large, much larger than the outside suggests, with cream walls and tall, thin, stained glass windows. The brown pews are empty, yet Sam swears he can hear the singing as if the room is full. He can hear Aileen's powerful voice and his eyes go to her empty seat. He'd walked through his door straight into Harlem. It even smelled like that restaurant on Lenox his mother would take them afterwards while they waited for their father. Between the music and the smell of sizzling beef, Sam feels five again.

"Where are we?"

Sam stares at the altar as he walks towards it. The bird leaps, flapping its wings and perching on the microphone. His knees bend and he falls to his knees. His eyes shut and his hands clasp together in front of him. There's a tremble in his body as he begins to pray. It feels like he hasn’t prayed in a long time.

"You all right?"

Sam sucks in a breath. In his position, he twists so fast he falls on his ass. The voice goes above the singing, magnified beyond human volume. He expects to see nothing but Bucky in an empty church—there isn't anyone else here, despite what he's hearing—but instead he sees next to Bucky a man in a black suit and tie. White shirt. Immaculate as he was in life. He’s five again, stuck in place. He’s sixteen again, watching someone stick a knife in his back.

Sam doesn't want to move. Everything he's gotten here, everything familiar has been so fleeting. He thinks about Steve’s face disappearing in his hands, seemingly so close. He doesn't want his dad to go away. He wants to run over and hold him. He wants to talk, to tell him everything about the children he didn’t get to see grow up. He wants to tell him about Captain America, and the fact that his son had adventures with the star of those radio shows he’d loved so much. He wants to hear his voice again, even with that unnatural booming that seems to reverberate through the building and his being.

Bucky's tense, ready to defend. Stepping back from his father. "No, I don't think I am."

"You want to talk about it?"

"I… I'm not a Christian."

"That's quite all right. You don't actually have to be Christian to seek help."

Sam stands as slowly as possible, but his father doesn't seem to notice him. His focus is completely on Bucky. Bucky's not looking at him either. For a moment, Sam wonders if he’s the ghost now. His father deserved to live. His father, who could actually transform lives, who was so good.

"Sure there's nothing you want to talk about?"

"I haven't talked in a long time."

"Still not answering my question. You don't gotta be dodgy, son. Nothing you say here will go anywhere. Now _speak._ "

Sam's father offers Bucky the bench, but Bucky shakes his head. "I'm fine standing." Sam keeps a steady pace, praying that this won't disappear. Why won't he look at him?

"What do you do when you wake up with seventy years worth of evil that you can't remember?" Sam's shocked to hear Bucky so frank. Bucky has no idea who he is, has no idea how safe those words truly are, how much he can trust the man in front of him. But then again, Sam always did feel like he can be frank with his father.

"Seems heavy. What do you mean, don't remember?"  
"I died once. The people who brought me back brought me back to do awful things. And I know, I don't remember it all, and I know I didn't choose to do it... but I did it." His mouth falls open when he finishes. Bucky shakes his head, eyes wide, but he continues speaking. "And things got better, so much better, I found my oldest friend and people who could help me, but I don't think I deserve to get off so easily after all I did." Bucky's hand flies to his throat. Sam can see his fingers squeezing He steps away from Sam's father again. "People who don't deserve to pay for my sins have paid for me. I don't deserve what I've got. I don't deserve to be alive."

"You think you deserve to be dead?"

Sam's a couple steps from Bucky. The way they're situated, Sam's dad should see him. He should recognize him.

"Yes."

"Dad." Sam forces the word out.

Neither look at him.

"Then why do you fight so hard to stay alive?"

Bucky finally turns to look at Sam. He shakes his head harder. His eyes are wide, unblinking, and it hits Sam. Bucky’s trying not to speak. Bucky’s afraid.

Sam’s voice falters as he speaks. "Dad?"

Reverend Wilson smiles at Sam. This close, he can see the red on his father's white shirt. A blossoming, spreading blood stain. Sam remembers the blood, but it was nothing like this.

"I'm so sorry, Sam, but I'm not here."

The blood stain seemed to lean forward until it broke. A red bird flew forward, towards Sam. And another. More birds, all a deeper shade of blood red than Sam’s bird, coming from the his father's shirt, all flying towards them. Bucky runs forward, tackling Sam, and he cannot see his father anymore. Just the flapping red wings driving through where they once stood. There’s no more music, only the frenzied batting of wings.

"Dad! Dad!"

Bucky's squeezing him tight, keeping him from getting up. Sam logically knows what Bucky is trying to do, but he can't be grateful when his father is right there. When the flutter begins to die and the birds are gone, they're no longer in his father's church. No, this time, they're back in the cold, in a dark, thin hallway. Sam can barely make out the walls but this isn’t his father’s church; this isn’t Harlem. Sam shoves Bucky off before rolling onto his feet. Standing, unraveling the blue jacket and putting it on.

"Sam, I don't know what that was back there, he was making me talk..."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Sam..."

"I am asking you to shut your mouth."

He looks absolutely ready to contradict Sam, so Sam glares until Bucky's face falls. Instead, he offers a nod. "I'm sorry. Just... stay nearby me. I know where we are and I think we should be careful."

"I can take care of myself."


	4. Chapter 4

Bucky Barnes woke up alone, and although he never told Sam this, he knew exactly where he was. And it was funny, because that memory was so fragmented that if the story wasn't later confirmed by both the museum and Steve's own stories, Bucky would've assumed Hydra left it there to confuse him.

That was where he fell from the train capturing Zola. And watching Sam get dragged away by soldiers that disappeared with the snow when Bucky pulled him away, hearing him go on about his arm, was all the confirmation he needed that somehow, Sam had been trapped in Bucky own shattered memories.

Accepting that made contextualizing the rest of their ordeal easier. Falling out the sky, the church was all Sam. The Potomac and here, this is Bucky's. Whatever Thanos did to them, the world around them was pulling from their minds, and Bucky didn't want to know what Siberia has waiting for him and Sam.

Bucky stays a step behind Sam, knowing there was no way Sam would let him contextualize why that _thing_ that looked like Sam's father spoke to Bucky and not Sam. Why it was better he did. He knows it isn't fair. He believes whatever's trapping them is using their memories to torture them. The why of this place cannot rack his brain too much if he's to remain sane for the both of them, yet one of the many questions nags at him. He looks over Sam's back, at his own jacket that he hasn't seen in years. Why Sam?

There were billions of people who didn't deserve Bucky's memories inflicted on them. The man who spent years looking for him, despite having no connection to Bucky or reason to believe he was worth saving? Well, he's probably the last person Bucky wants here.

"You said you knew where we were."

Sam doesn't turn. There's still an edge to his voice.

"Siberia. Hydra facility. We're heading to the other Soldiers."

"And where you and Steve tussled with Tony. Got it."

Tussled. What an understatement. Bucky has to force himself to keep walking. He’s never talked about it since that day. He’d assumed Steve hadn’t as well. "How much did Steve tell you?"

"Steve told me everything." Sam stops, forcing Bucky to stop as well. "I don't think I ever apologized to you for sending Stark to you."

Oh. Did Sam blame himself for the fight? Bucky's hand hovers by Sam's back, but he thinks better of it. "You couldn't have known what I did."

"You didn't do anything."

Sam starts walking again. Bucky’s legs feel heavy. He doesn't know what they're walking towards. Bucky’s torture? Another tussle with Howard's son? The soldiers alive? Either way, he won't let Sam face it alone. He won't let his baggage destroy Sam any more than it already has. Especially since neither of them are armed.

“Man, did Hydra not believe in lighting?”

No response. Bucky can’t formulate one. So much happened here… things Bucky can’t remember and things he can’t forget. Zola killed Bucky Barnes in this room and a large part of Bucky thinks he never came back. Just a specter with his face.

Bucky takes Sam's arm, pulling him back. "Wait." Sam glares but Bucky won't let him go in first. Bucky's more durable, more expendable.

"I can take care of myself."

"I've trusted your calls when you were listening to a bird. Trust mine this time."

Sam's hands gesture towards the door and his eyes roll. Maybe that was the point of everything they’ve seen. Driving them crazy, maybe even against each other.

Bucky takes a step into the room and it’s the same. He almost feels like he’s back here with Steve and Howard’s son. God, Howard. Howard was _good_ to them, Howard loved Steve and teased him and made bets with Bucky on how long after the war it would take Steve and Peggy to settle down. Neither of them won that bet, it looked like. Instead it was Howard that settled down, Howard that started a family.

It was Bucky that destroyed that family.

Bucky scans the glass pods as they light up and spots his first difference. The cases are whole, without bullet holes. They’re yellowed and, for some reason, Bucky cannot make out the soldiers. Another look at Sam, making sure he’s still right behind him, before heading left. Approaching the closest case. Bucky jumps back. He recognizes the girl seated in the pod but not by name. The brunette with the strange red powers, one of the people who fought alongside him in Leipzig.

“Wanda? Wanda!” Sam pushes past him, punching the glass. Another punch. Sam lets out a strangled noise and then begins to inspect the pod. “If you know how these open, tell me now.”

“Beats me.” Her eyes are closed. She’s so young. She’s wearing what she wore at the airport; the dark red jacket, the corset. Bucky wonders how old she is, and yet he knows if he asks, he’d feel even worse about her predicament. Younger than he and Steve were when they went to war, if he had to guess.

Four more pods for four more soldiers. Bucky swallows, following his hunch, going to the one next to it before Sam can. Once he gets close enough to make out the archer, he touches the glass. Another person who went to prison for Bucky’s freedom. The next one houses Scott, and Bucky only knows Scott’s name because of how excited Scott was to introduce himself to everyone. Scott the Ant-Man. Scott, who wanted everyone to autograph something for his daughter when they were done fighting the Soldiers. He'd asked Steve about them on visits, but Steve almost always dodged the question. He never went anything beyond “they’re home now, that’s what matters.”

The fourth one has the spy—Natasha, who also came to Wakanda, who kept a polite distance during Steve’s visits yet seemed the most prepared to do what was necessary should Shuri’s work had failed—and its Bucky’s first indication that these may not be Steve’s friends. She’s not just wearing what she wore at the airport; her hair’s red again, worn longer than she does now. Him and Sam’s clothes changed, but not their appearances. He glances back at Sam, whose fingers are drumming against the bottom of Wanda’s pod, looking desperately for a way to get her out.

“You find anything?”

The fifth one confirms Bucky’s suspicions, and he stops, unable to breathe. He turns back to Sam, then to the pod, trying to confirm what he’s seeing here. _Sam_. Sam in his Falcon uniform, eyes closed, frozen. Sam, in a dark green shirt, looking up to the pipes that connect to Wanda’s pod, trying to figure out where they go. Two Sams.

“Sam?”

“What is it?”

“You couldn’t have done that earlier?” It’s stupid, but Bucky can’t think of anything else that was just between him and Sam, no one else. So much of their… Bucky’s hesitant to even use the word friendship, considering how little time they’ve had… sprung from their mutual connection to Steve. It was the one thing Bucky could think of that only Sam would know.

“We got more important things to do than…”

“Sam, come here.” Bucky hits the glass of the pod with the palm of his hand, three times. Sam clenches his jaw but soon does what he says, walking over to the pod. His expression drops when he’s close enough to see, mouth falling open. He takes another step forward, fingers sliding along the glass. Over his own face.

“You couldn’t have done that earlier?” Bucky repeats, and though Sam probably doesn’t mean to, true to that day, he doesn’t even spare him a look.

“I hate you.”

“Sam, I don’t think these are your friends.”

“But _Wanda_ …”

“Sam, if that’s not you, then the others can’t be them.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t know anything right now other than you’re you, and these bodies are where five highly trained super soldiers are supposed to be.”

“How do you know I’m me? Because I said no? Jesus Christ, what am I supposed to do when I see myself in a pod?”

Bucky’s not sure how to answer that. The way this is going, he’s liable to eventually see himself in one of these.

“I gotta try to free them, Buck. If there’s just a small chance that these are our friends, I gotta try.” Sam shakes his head. “I can’t leave them like this.”

Bucky wishes he didn’t understand. Wishes he could make Sam see reason. Any wrong move here and they could fall through the floor again, or be attacked by birds, or any of the crazy things that have happened since T’Challa came to him with a new arm and a new war to fight. “Be careful.”

Sam gives him a slight nod. Bucky has no idea how much of an engineer Sam is, but that seems to not stop him from trying. He shakes his head, suppressing a smile. What an idiot. What a goddamn idiot. What a cosmic joke, he and Steve managing to find each other. Bucky feels more sure than before that the real Sam isn’t the one in the pod.

The frozen Sam looks just like him. The two years on the run had their effects on Steve and Natasha, but this Sam… presumably two years before… looks a lot like himself. Steve refused to tell Bucky how he and Natasha and Sam were surviving. Oh, if Bucky had to hear “the best way we know how” one more time. He touches the glass, and remembers Sam telling him that Steve tells him everything. Maybe the old Bucky got it straight from him, but the one that woke up doesn’t know how to handle Steve sometimes. Half of him wishes Steve would just insult him like old times, and the other half isn’t sure if today’s Bucky wants anything to do with the old times.

A hole appears in the glass, and Bucky jumps back. There’s a hole in the frozen Sam’s head, blood trickling down his face. He whips around, realizing that each pod has a similar hole. The soldiers died in real life, and they died here. The soldiers died, helplessly, unable to fight back. Collateral.

“Sam.” Bucky calls out his name. “Sam.”

“Hold up, I think I found something…”

“You can stop looking. They’re…” The last thing Sam needs is to see himself shot. Yet, Sam isn’t moving. He’s stopped in front of a monitor, and Bucky doesn’t need to get closer to know what froze him. Yet he goes to Sam anyway, stands to his right and is back to that moment two years ago. The video was clearly him, yet he couldn’t remember doing what he was shown doing. Bucky couldn’t imagine hurting Howard, and yet there he was, his perfect likeness, and he knew he did it. They sent him after a friend, and he wasn’t able to break the conditioning. What must Howard have said when he saw his face?

Bucky looks at the tape and narrows his eyes. The date on the cassette is wrong, despite the image on the screen being right. The black and white road, Howard’s car. But the date is entirely wrong. _26_ _июнь_ _2008._

“We’re not seeing the same thing, are we?”

“What do you see?”

“Me. What do you see?”

“Me.”

Neither can bring themselves to say it. Bucky turns to look at Sam. Studying his face, the unnatural stillness in his body. What could Sam have possibly done that would show on that screen? That date… was it when Sam’s nightmare happened? He knows that look, he lives in that state, but he can’t figure out why Sam does as well.

“You heard what I said in the church I… sometimes I do wish I was dead. Sometimes I daydream I fell off that train and that was it.”

“Why don’t you wish you never fell?”

Bucky thinks about Paul Wilson, asking him why he fights so hard to stay alive. Bucky thinks back to when they dropped out of the sky together. “Is that what you do?”

“I’m a guy with wings. What do you think?”

The lights behind them suddenly glow bright, and Bucky squints, throwing his hand up to block it from his eyes. It’s white and he’s not even sure if it’s light anymore. He can hear the screech of metal, the sound of bullets. He can hear Howard’s son’s suit, the missiles and the repulsors. He can hear Pierce, as if he’s right by his shoulder, lips brushing against his ear.

_“Your work has been a gift to mankind. You shaped the century. And I need you to do it one more time.”_

He shakes his head, shutting his eyes, and this time he hears Howard’s son.

_“Don’t bullshit me Rogers, did you know?”_

Steve, paying for him, letting his friends pay for him.

_“Then why did you run?”_

T’Challa. If there’s any justice in the world, then T’Challa isn’t here with them. Bucky’s hand reaches in front of him but he can’t feel the monitor. Just empty space. Nothing but voices, nothing but anger and malice.

_“I don’t care, he killed my mom.”_

Bucky feels a hand around his wrist and he yanks away. They won’t stop. Words in a language he doesn’t know yet understands completely. The words are nonsense stringed together and still he thinks he knows them, thinks they mean something.

The hand grabs his again, tighter this time. Bucky pulls harder. Stop. It just needs to stop.

_“Bucky!”_

Sam. Sam was next to him.

Sam was reaching for him. Fuck.

_“We gotta get the others, we gotta…”_

He shakes his head, and tries harder to hear those words over the rest of the noise. It’s Sam, it has to be Sam. He reaches out, trying to grab that hand again. There’s air.

_“Oh god Wanda, I… I’m so sorry.”_


	5. Chapter 5

“Wanda? Bucky?”

Sam doesn’t need to think about where he is. Even two years later, he remembers being dragged around the Raft in a blue jump suit. They came for him, a couple times a day, and they asked him where Steve went. It was always “where did Captain America go” rather than   
where did Captain America and the Winter Soldier go” and it felt like a large warning flag in his head that maybe this whole thing had been a well-developed smokescreen. Something to break up the Avengers and make it seem reasonable at that.

Scott was still Scott, silly, stupid Scott, and yet Sam had a newfound appreciation for him as he seemed to want more than anything to keep them sane. Clint, who was foaming at the mouth to get to Wanda, so hyperfocused on rescuing Wanda despite his own predicament, and Sam, who came back to the cells every now and then with a new visible bruise and at least a dozen nonvisible ones.

One of the cells. Bucky has to be in one of the cells. It is the only thing he could think of. And maybe if he’s here, then so are the rest of them. Scott and Clint and Wanda, the people who stayed behind to allow Steve and Bucky to do the job they’d hoped to do together. The people he ordered Steve to abandon.

Yet the Raft is different too. The doors to the prisoner areas are completely gone, leaving open doorways for Sam to look through. The glass that separated prisoners from the guards seemed to be replaced with mirrors, and as Sam checked the levels, there was only his reflection, banging back at the glass as Sam yelled Bucky’s name, in the off chance that there was even a cell still in there.

Sam stares at himself sometimes. After all this, he couldn’t have guessed he’d look so… normal. Besides Bucky’s jacket, he’s in regular clothes, a luxury three people on the run didn’t allow themselves to have. But then the image warps, and Sam has to force himself to look away. His right arm a bloody stump, gone at the elbow. He twists around to see his stomach, covered in blood. In another mirror, his clothes are replaced with thick gray armor, with a crackling center right at his chest. The cell that mesmerizes him the most has him in the original Falcon program suits, with smoking, mangled wings on his back.

Crazy. This place will make him crazy. He half wishes he stayed with Bucky on the bank, and yet if there is a way out, it’s through.

“Bucky!” Sam screams, and out of the corners of his eyes he can make out a bunch of other Sams screaming too. “Wanda!”

They were separate before, and maybe this thing saw fit to separate them again. But no. Sam couldn’t be alone again. Bucky had to be here. If Wanda was here, he had to save her too. He wouldn’t be the spectator in the sky this time. He’d save them all this time.

When Sam gets to the eighth level, he thinks, this has to be _it._ This has to be where they are. Every doorway seems like a possible passage elsewhere, but if Bucky isn’t with him, then maybe Sam has to go somewhere else. There’s always Wanda’s cell, and Sam holds out hope that the poor girl isn’t back there. Had Wanda been given anything less, been able to do anything less, been anything less but an _asset to the United States_ —there had been a folder that Steve threw into the ocean, detailing the various stages of plans they had for Wanda after incarceration, words that sickened Sam to the core and made him realize what a _mistake_ his call in Leipzig was—Sam would’ve pushed for them to find a quiet home for her. Wanda lost her childhood, lost her family, but they could have still set her up with a new life.

And now Vision was dead, and Wanda was alone again. God, he couldn’t let that girl be alone again.

“Wanda?”

The mirrors don’t show him this time. It’s Clint, in a blue jumpsuit, fists punching against an invisible barrier. Sam couldn’t see Clint in the Raft but he’d heard those thumps when Clint was at his most desperate, his façade giving way to something much more frantic. He can hear his voice, just as clearly as he did before.

_Where is she?! You better have not hurt her…_

Sam knew where she was. Sam saw her in the monitors, when they took him away to demand Captain America’s whereabouts. Grey, quiet, sunken, arms strapped to her body. When he brought himself to tell Clint he almost broke down.

_“Am I ever getting my phone call? A text? Someone’s gotta tell Maggie I won’t be able to take Cassie this weekend! Hey! I’ll settle for a DM!”_

The reflection became Scott’s. Hands against the glass, calm, a heart above them as if he’d huffed on the glass and drew one with his finger. Despite their predicament, his mouth still went hundreds of miles a minute. Yet it was Scott who asked about their lawyers, their phone calls, their families, their trial. A trial that would never came, that would have never come, even if Steve hadn’t come for them. _“God, from one cell to the next.”_

Sam had been the one who tracked him down, who kept his number handy. Sam had no doubt Anna could track him down with a little added information from Sam’s encounter with him, and trusted Anna even more not to publish a story about the Ant-Man. If it weren’t for Sam, Scott wouldn’t have even been at the airport.

Sam shuts his eyes tight, trying to ignore the visage of his friends. He shakes his head before reopening them, the mirrors this time reflecting himself. “Buck? Wanda?”

Fluttering wings answer his question, and he ducks as the bird flies over him. It lands in front of him, turning to look at him. Sam’s face twists. He’s not sure what to think of the red bird anymore.

“Your cousins get a kick out of that stunt with my dad?”

The red bird doesn’t answer, because it’s a goddamn bird and Sam’s stupid for talking to it.

“Okay, bigger question. Do you know where my friends are?”

The bird’s head twists from the left to the right before taking off in flight. It flaps its wings as it flies over Sam’s head. The bird brought him to Bucky, but it also brought him to his father’s church. It would be foolish to follow the bird, but he does it anyway. It’s the only hint he has.

The walls of the Raft press closer and expand, and Sam’s not sure how big the prison is anymore. When he was dragged along this hall to his questioning, it was sometimes the longest trip in the world and other times the most claustrophobic. Sam had to keep his cool for Clint though, had to keep it together to hold Steve’s secrets close.

Except he didn’t. He told Tony Stark.

_You couldn't have known what I did._

Steve had brushed off his apology as well. _“You tried to help us, even locked up. I can’t thank you enough.”_

It was the constant monster, waiting at the corners of his mind if he wasn’t vigilant. What’s the point of helping if all he can do is watch his friends pay? If all he can do is watch his friends fall? Structure helped; morning runs and his job and the people who trusted him enough to listen to his pain and talk about their own. Yet at the first chance of helping more people, Sam threw it away, and saw more and more good men crash out of the sky.

The bird landed just beyond a door, and Sam followed him in. He’d only come here once, after Steve freed them, to get Wanda out as well. She had mouthed “get it off”, and later Scott confirmed to them that she would have been stunned had her voice gone to a whisper. She was a brave girl, the bravest girl Sam knew.

Yet she isn’t there. Standing in her place is Bucky. Hands unbound, no collar, hands pulling at the bars, eyes wild. Something that at first glance looks to be the Winter Soldier’s mask covering his lower face. Yet as Sam moves closer he realizes whatever happened, it’s much worse. The black, grooved design seems formed to his face. Sam can see the shape of his nose but no nostrils; his beard is gone. The lower half of his face is an inky black. His mouth is entirely missing. Where it should be is instead a smooth, dark surface.

“Shit.”

Sam reaches through the horizontal bars, touching Bucky’s cheek. He can’t feel where the mask ends or Bucky’s face begins. His fingers slide closer, to where his mouth should be. “What happened to you?”

Bucky’s hands motion over his face. His fingers scratch from his eye down to his jaw, nothing stopping his nails’ descent. Sam doesn’t even know how he’s breathing, much less doing anything else.

“How do I…”

Steve had put a device into the lock, claiming he had help from a friend of Scott’s. He’d never met her in person, but she wanted her father’s suit back, and had the ability to find Steve to offer her services to the cause of their freedom. Sam had no such device, and no way of overcoming a cell that was meant to hold Bruce Banner.

Sam went to the lock, and tried to pull at the door. Nothing.

“I have to…” Ross’ command center. There had to be something there. “Buck, I gotta find a way to get you out.” Bucky shook his head. “Buck, I have to go, you don’t know what they did to Wanda in here…” Bucky’s metal hand clamps over his, and Sam does his best to read the message Bucky’s trying to send with his blue eyes. Since they’ve been here, Bucky’s been pulling him closer, pushing him behind him. Trying to protect him. But they’re not together if Bucky’s locked up; Sam can’t protect him with metal bars between them.

With his right hand, Bucky starts to clap against his hip. It takes Sam a moment to realize he should be translating it, the code coming to him easily enough. Bucky’s telling him to stay.

“I’ll be back. We’re in this together, and I’m not leaving without you.”

Bucky stares at him but eventually nods. Letting his hand go.

“I’ll come back for you.”

Sam turns to the bird and kneels down, sitting back on his heels. “We have to get Bucky out of here, okay? Show me what I gotta do.” If he looks at Bucky, he’s sure he’ll still manage to see the judgement. Sam’ll rub it in his face when they’re safe again and his face is back.

“Hey, how about next time we got some safety, we stay put, huh?”

Bucky’s not the type to lean back and wait either, but he nods anyway. The illusion that there’s a break on the horizon won’t sustain them long.

The bird takes off and Sam forces himself to his feet, following behind it. Stepping through the door and into... Sam stops. This isn’t the way he came.

Instead of the hall, he was in a cold, clinical room.  There’s a metal chair in front of him that the lights seem focused on, that the bird has settled onto. The chair flanked by computerized reads of a man’s body. The words are in another language, and yet Sam knows enough to recognize the images. Bucky’s, the longer he stares at it, it must be Bucky’s. The arm on the screen’s a giveaway. Behind the chair are two metal cranes, each with some sort of plate at the ends. Despite the light, Sam cannot see the walls. He’s not even sure how big the room is, but he does know that bird didn’t land nearby no damn key.

“All right, birdy, what am I looking at?”

The bird doesn’t answer. The lights seem to brighten, focus, and Sam sees less of the room. He backs to the door in case the light takes him away again, ready to bolt towards Bucky. Except the bird brought him here.

“What do you want me to do?”

Still, no answer.

“Where’s the key?”

The bird flaps its red wings, and then pecks at the seat.

“You want me to…”

And Sam knows. He knows it, in his gut, just like his gut told him that bird is on his side.

“And what happens if I sit in that seat?”

The bird just pecks the seat.

“Come on, you gotta give me more than that. What happens if I sit in that seat?”

Sam’s eyes flick to the machines. He’s not sure, but he can guess what they were for. He knows enough about what happened to Bucky to guess what they were for. Torture. Brainwashing. Both. Any of the myriad of things they did to make a good man into a weapon.

“Look, I’m not getting in no fucking Nazi technology…”

His heart nearly stops when he hears the scream. He twists to the door, but it’s dark behind him too, and the frame is completely gone. The darkness seems to be inching closer to his feet, and Sam turns to the chair again. It’s closing in on him and the chair, until all he can see is the cold metal in front of him and his own feet.

“What happens if I get in the damn chair!”

The screams sound louder, closer. It sounds like Bucky, but that’s impossible. It can’t be Bucky. Bucky’s mouth was gone… but if it is, Bucky might be coming here. Might be the one in that chair if Sam doesn’t do something.

The bird pecks at the chair, expectantly.

Sam isn’t sure why he’s so sure in the bird. Maybe he just needs the faith. But he shivers, thinking of what Bucky must’ve gone through for decades. What might happen if he follows the instruction. What might happen if he doesn’t follow the instruction. “If I get in the chair, will that help Bucky?”

The bird flies out of the chair, landing on the monitor. Giving Sam a place to sit.

A breath. 

He won’t be the spectator in the sky this time.


	6. Chapter 6

Bucky tries to scream for Sam. Nothing comes out. He can feel the sound in the back of his throat, but it dies before he can hear it. The longer Sam’s gone, the more Bucky’s sure he shouldn’t have left in the first place.

He’d woken up feeling his lips mold together, muffled yells and gasps slowly disappearing as his face seemed to melt together. He could see the darkness when he looked down. He’d realized he was in a cage afterwards, and he didn’t recognize anything about it. This was Sam’s memory, it had to be, but Bucky wasn’t sure when _this_ might’ve happened to him.

It reminds him of his muzzle.

He doesn’t even know how he’s breathing.

“So.” Bucky’s eyes look forward. He doesn’t recognize the older man in front of him, but he can tell by the badges pinned to his suit that he served. “I was hoping we’d be done having these talks by now, but loyalty is admirable.”

Oh.

Bucky pulls closer, trying to look down the hall for a glimpse of Sam. He’ll do what he must to warn him about the visitor. But there’s no one down the hall Sam disappeared down. He hopes Sam hasn’t found anything too awful waiting for him here.

“I’ve talked with the rest of the committee. We’ve put together quite a package for you and your associates, if I do say so myself.” The man holds out his arms, but there’s nothing in his hands. “House arrest for Barton and Lang. Lang’s suit will remain with us, I hope you understand. A more comfortable place for Ms. Maximoff to wait until she agrees to sign on to the Accords. I’ll let you meet with her regularly and I’ll even put you on payroll if you sign to make sure Maximoff stays in line… and that she’s being treated well, of course. I don’t think I’m asking for much in return for all of this.”

Even if he could say a word, he’s unsure what to say. He’s not even sure if he understands what he’s saying. Lang’s Scott, but Barton and Maximoff… maybe… _oh._ His eyes widen and he looks again for Sam. Is this what happened to them? After Leipzig?

“Come on. I know the guys have taken to violence to get their point across, but I think it’s a shame to see you bruised behind a cell. We need more good men at the front line, not less. Play ball with me and I’ll take care of your team. What happens to them is entirely on your shoulders.”

Bucky has a couple four letter words for that.

“Whatever happens to _her_ is on your shoulders, now where is Captain America?”

The man doesn’t ask about him. Why though? Bucky’s the dangerous one, Bucky’s the one that they think killed T’Challa’s father.

“Tell me where Captain America is. Your team is counting on you.”

Bucky still can’t respond, and the man sighs. “I’ve done some reading about your last couple of years. You managed to rack up quite a few airline miles looking for a Hydra assassin. And what did you get for that? What did Captain America give you for being a good little soldier? He got what he wanted from you, and now he and his old war buddy are gone. Maybe it’s time you thought about yourself. Or maybe just them.”

Bucky felt the fist before he saw who threw it. He was caught, held up. His cheek smarts, and he can barely make out the outline of a man. A… soldier. Bucky’s eyes squint, and he’s sure he recognizes that uniform, but he’s not sure from where. It’s all black. Completely clothed from the neck down. It’s all so fragmented. He’s not even sure where they came from. The soldier grabs his free arm, and they pull him forward. To the bars.

Bucky shuts his eyes and waits for the smash, but they keep moving forward. His eyes open and he can’t see the older man anymore. He’s on the other side of the bars. From his position here, he can see a patch on the shoulder with a yellow eagle and the word _STRIKE._

“Take him back to his cell.” He can hear the man’s voice, but he looks around for him and sees nothing. “Let him think it over.”

Their grasps are tight around his arms. His limbs feel heavy. What a strange turn, that doing nothing would have freed him. Bucky thrashes, but their grips hold tight. He can’t warn Sam. Wherever Sam is looking, he can’t call to him. Maybe it’s like the snow, where pulling Sam away broke whatever spell he was under. All he needs is Sam to pull him away from these soldiers and they can move onto a new horror of both their minds.

He didn’t see any of the arrested Avengers other than Sam since Leipzig, and by the time he saw Sam, the wounds mixed in with new ones. Steve would’ve never been content to lay low, and of course, neither are his friends. He’d known Sam was arrested, knew they all were, but how much of what happened to him just now was true to Sam’s experience? How much of what happened did Steve keep from him?

He looks around the hall he’s being dragged through. It’s a strange decoration for a prison: there are bird heads on the wall, eyes glassed over, redder than the one Sam likes so damned much. More like the ones from the church. His heels dig into the ground, trying to delay his journey to Sam’s cell. He hasn’t felt this weak… since Siberia, maybe. Since Howard’s son blew off his arm. He looks to his left to make sure it’s still there, that token that a young princess in another lifetime believed that Bucky Barnes was worth saving.

The spy—Natasha—said something one night that keeps replaying in his head. Steve had been sitting outside with Sam, talking about something in low voices, and Natasha was in his doorway, just watching him. They hadn’t exchanged much words, though she had hinted their history was one splattered with her blood. She had showed him one of her guns, taken from a bunker in Eastern Europe.

_“If the princess didn’t save you, then I’ll save everyone else.”_

Bucky had no idea how to tell her that he’d welcome the bullet. He just watched her go back to Steve and Sam, and the spy turned off. Next to Steve and Sam, she was another woman. Lighter. Freer.

A scream shakes him, and he looks around, trying to find the source. If the men holding him heard it, they gave no impression of it, still pulling him forward. Another scream, so familiar in ways Bucky can’t quite understand, and that’s when he sees it. The open beak of one of the bird heads, face expressionless. As soon as the beak closes, the screaming stops. His eyes catch the one that opens next, letting out that strange yet familiar scream.

What kind of insanity is this?

The arms yank Bucky forward, harder, and he shoves his shoulder into the one on his left as they turn. Another scream. The soldier shoves him back harder. He can see another doorway in front of them, can see a room full of cells. If there are people in there, he cannot see them yet. If he’s just being deposited into another cell, that’s just _fantastic._

The soldiers tug him through the door, and Bucky blinks. There’s another scream, louder, almost as if the birds are by his ears. His stomach feels heavy, his arms surprisingly don’t _._  His eyes widen. This is all wrong. It’s all wrong.

Instead of the light that shone through the door, there’s darkness. Instead of the empty cells, there’s a chair in the middle, very much occupied. Sam. Sam with one arm fastened to the chair and another free yet unmoving. That stupid goddamn bird on a monitor, also unmoving, its eyes on Bucky. This close, the bird seems almost serene, and considering the situation, Bucky wouldn’t mind cooking the thing. And the soldiers that just moments before were gripping Bucky’s arms are now suddenly at Sam’s side, holding out a black bit.

Sam looks to the bird, before opening his mouth. Letting them put it in.

No _._

Bucky tries to scream but nothing comes. They don’t push Sam back, no, Sam willingly leans back in that chair. Sam is looking straight at him but it’s like he doesn’t see him; the bird does, head tilting at him. Sam’s eyes shut and his stomach ripples with panicked breaths as one of the soldier begins to use the monitor.

No no _no_.

It’s just like when he first found him, Bucky tries to convince himself, and he rushes forward. Once he pulls him free, the illusion will break. What could Sam have _done._ What thing in his life made him think he should take Bucky’s torment on, make him think he deserves it? Bucky thinks of all the things he knows about Sam, things not even Sam knows he knows. He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand.

His metal arm reaches into the chair as the plates begin their descent towards Sam’s face. He grabs Sam’s shirt and pulls him forward, praying he’s right.

Bucky stumbles back, pulling something loose. All he can see is red. He’s surrounded by feathers, falling slowly around him. Blindly, he stumbles forward, trying to get back to the chair. The soldiers are gone. Sam’s gone. Sam’s gone.

His metal hand opens, and there, crumbled under the strength of his fingers, is a single red feather with a bone white rachis. Bucky’s eyes shut tightly and he feels a scream deep in his throat that never comes. Sam promised he’d come back. Sam was just supposed to go grab a key, not…

Bucky lays his right forefinger on the main shaft, trying to understand why he grabbed Sam and pulled forward just a red feather. He doesn’t know what to do with it. They shouldn’t have separated. Bucky would’ve been fine remaining if that cell if that meant Sam didn’t have to go through this.

The floor’s covered with red feathers, but none of them with the white middle. Bucky hopes Sam’s bird is among them but there’s much too much for it to be all a small bird. Bucky lowers to his knees, looking it all over. Maybe Sam was right. Maybe this is hell.

***

 When Bucky forces himself to walk out the door, the first thing he does is take a gasping breath. He falls to his knees, hands clawing at his face to be sure of what he’s doing. His nails catch on his beard, scratch his lips, but Bucky still rips at something that’s no longer there. He’s free. His mouth’s back. He hadn’t breathed in… well, he’s not sure what time is anymore. Maybe Sam was right. What else could it be? He’d suddenly, without rational explanation, found Sam, and just as easily, he was taken away. Gone in a puff of feathers.

The feather Bucky pulled from Sam’s on the floor and Bucky carefully picks it up with his right hand. His thumb traces the white stem. He had to find Sam. He had to find Sam and they could stand still for a little bit. Maybe the world was fighting back because they insisted on finding a way out; maybe the way to peace was to accept their hell.

That wasn’t Sam’s personality though. Bucky knew as soon as Sam said it that neither of them wanted to stop looking for a way out, but damn it sounded good right now. They could have stayed on the riverbank and waited for things to make sense again.

“S…” His voice comes out raspy, and he takes another breath. “Sam?”

He’s not in the prison anymore; he’s far away from anything Hydra. No, under different circumstances, he’d feel nothing but relief. He can almost imagine the regal Dora Milaje walking down these halls lit by large, wall spanning bright blue monitors, their faces giving nothing away about their feelings towards him. Despite his name being cleared, Princess Shuri always urged he travel with caution—the sight of his face plastered on international news as her father’s killer was a hard image to banish from everyone’s minds.

“Sam?”

Bucky was an intruder in many ways, and he knew it, but things slowed down in Wakanda.  They’d allowed him to live without the physical reminders of the 70-year gap in his memory. It was hard to convince T’Challa that he wasn’t indebted to Bucky for how Zemo tricked him—no, it was Bucky who owed him, Bucky who lucked into the graces of the one family in the world that could give him another chance. Even with their own world destroying issues, they’d taken care of him.

But there was no point in returning to safety if Sam was still in trouble.

“Sam!”

They’d gone everywhere together so far, he just hoped that Sam made it to this projection of Wakanda, to the very building where the Winter Soldier came to die. And if there were people here, if the Dora Milaje and the rest of the Wakandan Design Group were here, it would be perfect. The place Bucky had fallen in love with but always knew he’d have to eventually leave behind. The perfect place to stop fighting for a while.

“Sam!” Bucky calls out, moving slowly through the hall. Sam’s memories of home were twisted by this, and logically, Shuri’s mountain enclosed lab could be too. He wanted to believe Wakanda incorruptible, but seeing black bodies fall in hopes of stopping the apocalypse proved that false already. Besides, if Sam was right, then Wakanda became Bucky’s own grave as well.

“Sam!”

Some doors are gone, but Bucky doesn’t need markers to know which way he’s heading. Once, he followed a brilliant young woman down these halls, a young woman who promised she’d found a way to remove 70 years of conditioning but retain the less than 30 of a stupid young man who’d dreamed of flying cars. In some ways, Shuri’s still leading him now. Her confidence lead him through to peace once, and with nothing but the memory of her knowing smile to go on, he headed for her lab.

Let the kid be alive. Finding Sam here was bad enough; he doesn’t want to see that girl here. Shuri’s been through enough. She’d take lead in rebuilding what Thanos destroyed, only T’Challa’s influence—as a king and an older brother—keeping her from giving more than her fair share to her country. She’d run herself ragged saving Wakanda without him.

“You know Natasha’s asleep, right? You could just go lie down with her.”

Bucky stops.

“Steve?”

“Like that girl sleeps. And when are you gonna get some sleep, Captain Nomad?”

_Sam._

Bucky runs towards the even voices. They sound… calm. Too calm for the predicament. But that’s Sam’s voice, with Steve, and he can’t leave them alone. The idea of not only finding Sam, but _Steve…_

“I just want to check in on him, all right?”

Steve’s voice remains distant, but Bucky rushes forward. “Steve?”

“I’m not stopping you.”

“Sam!”

“You don’t have to come with me. Get some rest.”

“What are those, _Captain’s_ orders?” Sam sounds like he’s teasing. “You could probably use the company.”

Bucky finds them in front of the door to Shuri’s lab, wearing their armor. Sam’s not wearing his wing pack, but otherwise the two men are dressed for war. Steve turns to Sam and claps his hand on his shoulder. Steve’s got stubble but not the full beard yet. Still, the sight of his dearest friend is a thrill.

“I don’t know when we’ll have a bed next, Sam.”

Despite being a couple steps in front of them, it’s as if they’re still far away. Bucky takes a step closer, and the two don’t seem to notice him at all.

“And what would I do with one?”

“Most people sleep on them.”

Bucky reaches for Steve’s back. His hand falls right through it; he can see his vibranium fingers through Steve’s body, suddenly incorporeal. Bucky snatches his hand back and the body becomes saturated again, solid; this isn’t Steve.

“Shit.”  
Bucky’s fingers slide over the feather in his hand. Then that’s not his Sam either.

Bucky’s hand presses forward through Sam, proving his suspicion. Like the Sam in the glass case, this one isn’t real, and all he wants is to find the Sam who was wearing his jacket, who’d sat in that chair. He needed to know _why,_ what possessed him to do something so stupid so willingly. Maybe the Sam in the chair wasn’t real either, and Bucky had lost him because Sam was dumb enough to try to save him. But he’d been wearing Bucky’s coat. That had to be his Sam.

He follows Sam and Steve into Shuri’s lab. The recreation is perfect. The brilliant blue lights, the projections with reads beyond his scope of knowledge, the white winding ramp downwards. He can see the mountain, the white seats where the princess sat him down and tested his mind. Shuri was confident she’d saved him, and Bucky couldn’t bring himself to argue with her, not here or at his farm, not two years ago and not now. Never could engage that losing battle.

“Here to see the patient?”

Bucky jumps at Shuri’s voice, and he turns to look at her. Willing her away. He’d seen her in these clothes before. He swallows a breath. She’s talking to them. She’s talking to the fake Steve and Sam, and that means this isn’t the real Shuri either. Still, Bucky reaches out his hand to touch her thin arm, fingers gently going through to prove his suspicion. He sighs in relief, nodding to no one.

She must be safe. Shuri _has_ to be safe.

“You know he can’t see you. You should both take a shower. Maybe send that through the wash, Captain Rogers.”

“I appreciate the offer, Princess, but I need to be here.”

“Very well. As always, no touching anything.” Both men smile and nod at her.

“You still working at this time? What, you made sleep obsolete?”

“I haven’t quite gotten the formula down.”

Bucky has no idea if they’d even talked like this in life. Surely not in front of him. It seems so easy for Sam, creating bonds with people. A kind of camaraderie that Bucky had once had with Steve, one that he could imagine having with Sam. Sam and Steve just walk toward the back of the lab; towards a pod that Bucky remembers going into willingly. Bucky swallows. They're here visiting _him_.

Sam and Steve move as if they've done this often. They know exactly where to find seats; they both settle on either side of his pod. Steve leans against it, looking down at him. Sam's arms are crossed; every now and again, his eyes droop close, and he blinks himself awake. Steve had told him before that he doesn't know when they'd have a bed next, a level of honesty Steve never extended to Bucky since his return. Steve gave Bucky assurances instead of the truth, and maybe it was because of what Bucky was feeling now. The ache in the back of his throat as he replayed, over and over, the events that lead to Steve and his friends' lives as fugitives.

"You okay?"

Steve smiles at Sam. "Could be worse."

"Could be better."

"Yeah. Could be better."

Bucky knows his recovery has to go the way it’s going. Knows he needed the time to find himself without the lingering specter of Steve's Bucky, or the knowledge of the damage the Winter Soldier inflicted on Sam or Natasha’s lives. But he misses that kind of bonding. Bucky wishes he could be as free and comfortable as Steve and Sam are around each other.

"You really don't have to stay, Sammy."

Sam reaches across Bucky's pod and touches Steve's hand. Bare fingers lying against the leather of Steve's gloves. Bucky’s frozen, captivated by the simple touch, watching their hands. "its important to you, its important to me."

"I really couldn't have done this without you."

Bucky looks at the feather in his hand. He can't do this without Sam either. He can't stay here. He can't believe he's let himself stay here when Sam was so willing...

"You bored too Bucky?"

Bucky's eyes snap up at his name. Sam's smiling down at the pod though, moving his hand away from Steve's. He pulls a small bright orange book from his pocket, flipping through to the front page.

"What have we got this time?"

"Trust me, you'll like it. And well if the popsicle doesn’t, I guess he can’t say anything about it, huh?"

"He can't hear you!" Shuri doesn't look up from her work.

"That's cool." Sam and Steve share another smile. Bucky can't bring himself to move as Sam looks down into the book. It's old, the pages worn, the spine bent so often that pieces of the cover have fallen off. When Bucky was in hiding, he'd bought plenty books like that for change. Hoping to learn about the world that passed him by. Steve asked him _what have they got this time_ , which means Sam has done this before. Sat by his frozen body and read to him before.

"I look at myself in the mirror. I know that I was christened Clementine, and so it would make sense if people called me Clem, or even, come to think of it, Clementine, since that's my name: but they don't. People call me Tish."

Sam's reading voice is lovely, even with whatever makes their voices sound so far away. Bucky wishes he could've heard it the first time. He steps closer. Steve's eyes are on Sam, leaning against the pod. Even Shuri's eyes flick from her work to Sam momentarily. If Shuri's right, and Bucky can't hear or see Sam or Steve... this isn't Bucky's memory at all. It can’t be Bucky’s memory. It must be Sam's. And if it’s Sam’s, Sam must be here.

His thumb runs over the feather as he stands in front of the cryo pod. Close like this, he can see that it's not him in there at all. He lets out a sigh, smiling wide. It's Sam. Sam in his old blue coat, eyes closed. His Sam. The real Sam.

Bucky's metal hand lies on the glass. Bucky wasted so much time here, yet somehow, Sam was here the whole time. Maybe there was something bigger at play. Bucky looks at Sam, at Steve, and then back to the real Sam.

"I really wish I could understand why you felt so guilty." Bucky's hand cocks back and he punches the glass. It doesn't give. Another punch. "You don't deserve this." A third. Still, not even a crack. "Come on. You said... you said we were in this together." Bucky keeps hitting it, and between Shuri's impressive technology and whatever was going on in this world, the glass wouldn't give.

Bucky breathes heavily, staring at Sam's sleeping face. He looked at the fake Sam, the Sam that was reading… that was reading to _him_ , he reminds himself… at Steve, at Shuri. The people who mattered most in the last few years of his life.

"Help me."

It wasn't pointed at any of them specifically; a wish to make sense of this world. Sam always seemed to know what to do, even if that knowledge came from a weird winged creature that got to come and go as it pleased. Then again, Sam was a bird too.

Bucky opens his human hand and looks at the crumpled feather.

"Come on."

This time, he reaches forward with his right hand. He’s already calling himself stupid as he presses the feather to the glass.

And he falls.

Bucky gasps, sliding through. He can feel the moment his body hits Sam's and they're falling, he can't see. The other Sam's reading disappears as they fall together, Sam groaning as they hit the ground.

"Huh..." Sam's voice is drowsy, mumbled, but it's Sam. Elbows on the ground, trying to force himself up, even with the hundred-year-old soldier sprawled on top of him.

Bucky doesn't even take a moment to look around, or right himself. Bucky laughs. His arms wrap around Sam and he squeezes tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, this is absolutely two chapters instead of one, but I'm a coward who wants to end a chapter on a better note than I have in a while. Consider it a thank you for reading


	7. Chapter 7

“Stupid.” Bucky’s hands press into Sam’s back, marveling at how solid he is. Yeah, this is the real Sam. The very real, very _stupid_ Sam. “Are you… are you okay?”

“It was me.” Sam mutters.

“What were you thinking?”

“Bucky, Bucky, it was me.” Sam takes a breath, squeezing his arms. “I don’t… know how but I was the bird. The bird was _me_ , that’s why I trusted it, it was me…” If he’d received a shock, perhaps it scrambled his brains. Bucky touches his face, tilting it, making sure he’s not lost his mind. “Look, I know it was crazy, but I sat in the chair, and suddenly, I was flying. I had my exo, and I was back where I started. I was looking for you and I found me. Bucky, I saw everything. I did it all again.”

He’s crazy. Bucky’s stunned, staring at him. “Okay, I’ll bite. How did you sit on the monitor?”

Sam shrugs. “Stood behind it.”

“Did you try to talk to him… you, I guess?”

“I screamed at the top of my lungs. I stood with myself waiting for Hydra men to set me up in that chair. It was insane…”

“Why?”

Their eyes are on each other’s, neither breaking the stare. Bucky needed to understand, he couldn’t understand the man beneath him. “Because I knew it would fix everything. I knew they would come get you out so they could get me. I knew you’d be free.”

Bucky shakes his head. “You can’t trade yourself for me.”

“After everything you’ve seen? Come on Bucky.”

And he’s right. They’ve fallen from the sky, they’ve seen his father, they’ve seen the bodies of the other Avengers. If Sam’s memories have taught him anything, it’s that he’s seen enough people die. But Sam could be a hero again once he and Steve were reunited. Not alone, like this. Not for Bucky.

“ _Don’t_ trade yourself for me.” He repeats, harsher.

And for some reason, Sam just lets out an indignant laugh. “And you’ll promise the same for me? Yeah right. Get off.”

Oh.

Bucky nods, getting off Sam. Better things to dwell on than Sam’s response. He stands up and looks around, trying to figure out where they were now. They were surrounded by people, except there was something off about them. Under hats and beautiful coifs were blank, featureless faces. The more he stared though, the more he thought he could almost see someone familiar.

Sam and Bucky were in one of multiple spotlights. The more attention he pays to the room, the louder he can hear trumpets, a lively tune. Bucky’s eyes scan the room, wide with long forgotten wonder, catching the Synthetic Man behind the glass. A model globe, with layers cut out to show the core, large enough to span the room. Another turn, and above a beautiful red car that Bucky sometimes catches in his dreams, he sees the words _Stark Industries._

“What is this?”

 “Stark Expo.”

“Stark… like Tony?”

Bucky looks at the faceless bodies, at the style of their hair and the way that they’re dressed. Plenty of people in an olive uniform that Bucky recognizes. He looks down, to make sure he’s not in one of them. “No, like Howard.”

Bucky couldn’t have imagined knowing Howard Stark all those years ago, much less being his friend. He’d looked up to him, a brilliant inventor who worked towards flying cars and Captain America. For one day in 1942, Howard’s brilliance gave Bucky one final wonderful memory. And even though the tech is nearing eighty years out of date, the expo still feels like the future. The future when the future was bright.

“I made Steve come with me. He ditched me and two beautiful girls on my last night.” He grins at the memory. “Next time I saw him, he was Captain America.”

“Good way to kill the past, huh? No better way to say you’re never coming back then your best friend growing a foot.”

“I’ve lived way too many of those moments. Steve getting to live his dream, hell getting to live past thirty? Well that one wasn’t so bad.” Bucky’s smile softens, and then gestures around him. “Remember you said… before you left me…”

“We stay put?”

Bucky nods. “This wasn’t that bad a day. And unlike you I haven’t gotten any naps.”

“I wasn’t asleep…”  
“You were a bird. Got it.” He’s not even sure he believes Sam, or if it was all some fever dream while he rested in Shuri’s lab. Anything could be possible at this point. “Kind of fitting, taking a breather here at the end of the world.”

“Who knows when else we’ll get a chance, right?” Sam’s hand rests on the middle of his back. “So a double date and some technology is your idea of a good time?”

They start to ease their way past the faceless bodies, a slight lilt of laughter coming from an unknown source. Part of it is a level of caution, an idea that any step could make them fall to the floor and out of Stark Expo. These creatures could become something more sinister in the blink of an eye. On a bigger level though? Sam’s got him pegged. That night was exactly his idea of a good time. Seeing the Human Torch on display, Howard’s floating car? In 1942 it seemed like the closest they could get to real magic, to miracles.

The super soldier race that caught up him and his best friend forever ruined miracles for him.

“This isn’t a good time to you?”

“Nah, I dig it.” Bucky can tell too. Sam’s eyes are all over the place, flickering over each invention on display. Bucky nudges him, flicking his nose towards the glass pod a couple feet in front of them. “What do you know about the Human Torch?”

Bucky wishes he could say he remembered. When he was recovering in Wakanda, he’d come across Phineas Horton’s name and it sliced through any peace he had. That name used to mean something to him, and yet he couldn’t remember. A Dora found him surrounded by books and print outs, one name triggering another, yearning memory. Yet he’s knitted together enough of his knowledge to tell Sam about the android in front of them.

Bucky still doesn’t remember some of the pieces, though they tug at something deep. Colors and images begging for Bucky to recall, but some pieces of him were lost to seventy years of the blender. Everything he managed to retrieve, though? He wants to share it with Sam. After everything, there’s something kind of nice about watching Sam grin and test out Smell-O-Vision.

The beautiful red car looms, and Bucky’s not sure if he should approach it. He can’t see Howard, young and brilliant and self-assured, without seeing him older, greyed, with blood on his face while his friend murdered him.

Sam points it out, and Bucky shakes his head.

“It floated for a while and then it crashed. Wasn’t there yet.”

“Was it cool?”

“Coolest thing I’d seen in my life.” Howard’s name weighs down his tongue. “He was brilliant. Makes sense he had a genius son.”

Sam nods, and the conversation’s over. Too perceptive at this point. “We can go look at something else?”

He should. Bucky knows he should, knows that seeing a dead friend won’t bring him back. This… thing didn’t bring back Sam’s father, and it won’t bring back Howard. But he wants Sam to see the flying car, even if it seems pedestrian to a man who spends his days flying with large metal wings.

Bucky’s hand rests on Sam’s back. “Come on. Come see this.”

Had it been like this with Steve? That day morphed a thousand times over in his head until Bucky wasn’t even sure what was a memory and what was a fantasy. Bucky scans the bodies for a uniform, for a small blonde man in a tanned jacket. None of the bodies are familiar enough though. The longer he stares into the crowd for a glimpse, the more he thinks he sees glasses, a smirk… he shakes his head and the faces are blank again. They’re like moving mannequins, morphing human once they have attention.

In front of the car, there were five faceless women in top hats. Their vests had circular black and white bullseyes, seemingly growing and spinning as Bucky looked at them. His eyes snapped up, to their faces, trying not to be dizzy. The lips appear to be a darkish red, their hair curling around their ears. He can’t be sure… it doesn’t come into focus… but they remind Bucky of _her_ , of the woman he’d thought his best friend would marry.

Bucky asked about Peggy once. He never brought her up again. He’d learned through research of her death… when _exactly_ she died… and Bucky’s stomach lurched. When Steve should have been in England with her family, he was chasing Bucky through Europe. Another thing Bucky had managed to wrest from Steve’s fingers.

Sam’s hand catches his, and he looks at him, confused.

“Jesus Buck, don’t look.”

“What?”

Bucky turns to the stage and still only sees the women.

“You don’t see that?” Sam urges, and Bucky shakes his head.

“See what?”

The women move away and the car’s no longer there. Instead, there’s another mannequin like figure, this one with goggles and large metal wings. Bucky turns to Sam, whose breathing heavy, and then back to the wings.

“Sam, what do you see?”

“He sees you.”

Bucky jumps away, hands immediately going up to his face. Sam’s gone again; in his place is a woman with dark red hair and green skin. She’s in dark clothes, staring towards the stage.

“Where’s Sam?”

“He hasn’t moved. Your connection has been… severed, temporarily. He sees me where he should see you as well.” She turns to Bucky, shaking her head. “Forgive me. Once I move on, you’ll have each other again.”

“I don’t…”

“No, it doesn’t really make sense, I’m afraid. Minds aren’t meant to understand the soul.” A smile. Bucky can’t help but feel unnerved. While he’d thought it, he hadn’t said it, and yet she was responding anyway. “He says he won’t move his seat up. He says you will understand what it means.”

Bucky nods, trying to consider what this could be. Another test? Yet she’s nothing like Bucky’s seen. She can’t be from his mind. From Sam’s, maybe?

“I’m not. You’ve deduced a lot more about this world than plenty I’ve met before you.” She turns to look at him. “What they did to you… I’m sorry. It’s truly for the best the stone chose to take you both. Some people were sent to their souls alone.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your friend already does. I think you might too.” The green woman looks down, her voice lowering. “We lost. Thanos won. I was hoping to find the man I was meant to face the soul stone with, but with half the universe here, it’s proven… difficult. I’m lucky I found you both and I don’t even know you.”

“Thanos won.” Bucky needs a seat. He’d only seen the monster once, had barely made a dent in him. That explains Steve’s reaction to him. It explains everything. “Sam’s right. We died.”

“For now.” The woman rests her hand on Bucky’s arm. “But what’s important still lives, and you will go back. Our friends will bring you both back.”

“Our friends?”

“I sense you’ve met Rocket.” She smiles. “He’s… rough. But he’s had a life a lot like yours.” As if she senses his confusion, she adds, “The raccoon with the gun.”

The image of shooting alongside a raccoon pops into his head. It’s one of the last things Bucky saw alive, the wise cracking critter who had tried to haggle for his gun and arm in the middle of Armageddon. The idea that he has anything in common with a raccoon seems ridiculous, yet he knows what he must seem like to someone looking at him. An aberration. A monster. A raccoon with a gun felt like a compliment.

“Will Sam and me find anyone else?” He wants to ask if _Steve’s_ here, or Shuri, or T’Challa. Any of the Avengers really. They should be safe, and yet if they’re not, Bucky wants to be by their side.

She shakes her head. “A soul is very particular about who it lets in. Only my unique circumstance let me into yours.” She steps closer to him, squeezing his arm gently. Bucky shouldn’t trust her, doesn’t know her, and nothing in this… _death_ , apparently… has been on his side. Nothing but Sam. “Listen. You just have to survive your souls until our friends find a way to reverse this. You will experience each other’s greatest fears and hopes, and all you have to do is lead each other through them.”

Bucky knows his. He looks down at his metal arm and imagines the one he had before, the signifier of the seventy years that Bucky lost. A 100-year-old man who spent most of his life a weapon rather than a man. He’d barely stopped himself from killing Steve once; he couldn’t stop himself from killing the man whose name was right before him. He couldn’t tell you what his worst fear was in 1943, but now? Even with the scattered pieces of himself he’s barely been able to fit together, he knows what he’s about to inflict on Sam.

“What if I can’t?”

“You have to. For him.” Her arm moves away, and Bucky catches the look on her face. Far off, eyes red. “When your friends bring you back, find Rocket’s friends… the Guardians of the Galaxy. You tell them… you tell them that Gamora only lived in the years we were a team. Tell them Gamora loved them. You must tell Peter that, and Nebula. Remember those names. Peter, Nebula.”

“How do I…”

“Faith.” The girl… _Gamora_ , apparently… shakes as she answers the unspoken question. A tear slides down her cheek, along the ornate markings on her face. “Mention David Hasselhoff to Peter, too. He’ll confirm I was real.”

Bucky considers reaching his hand out and touching her arm. Why wouldn’t she go back, tell those people herself? Was she… Bucky stiffens, her body glowing orange. “Wait. Wait.”

She mouths something Bucky cannot make out, and suddenly, Sam’s back in her place. Bucky blinks. Sam’s arm’s outstretched, likely reaching for her before she’d disappeared from him too. He glances around, letting out a breath and pulling his hand back to his body.

“Where did she go?”

Bucky shakes his head. He doesn’t know. “Does the name… David Hasselhoff mean anything to you?”

Sam opens his mouth, but then blinks. His head tilts, mouth still open, and he studies Bucky. “Did you just say David Hasselhoff?”

A shrug. “She gave me that name.”

“I’m sorry, the green woman said David Hasselhoff?”

“Oh, is that weirder than you being a bird?”

“Yes!” He shouts, and then looks around as if he could disturb the mannequins around them. Bucky can’t help but laugh as Sam grows pink. Soon Sam snickers, and then joins in, both laughing. They can’t help it. Bucky’s sure Sam knows like he knows that something is coming up for them, that the worst of this place hasn’t yet come. But while it isn’t here, maybe they can find something to laugh about.

The soul is very particular about who it lets in, Gamora said. And Bucky’s soul let in Sam’s.

“We can… talk about what she told us later,” Sam says as he composes himself. “I think you’re not done giving me the tour of this place.”

“You want to relive the whole night? Find a couple girls and go dancing after this?” If Gamora was to be believed, they had something awful to look forward to, and the least they could do was dance. Unless this was reversed first. If anyone could bring them back to life, it was Steve.

“What are you doing _dancing?”_ Sam mocks.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that civilized people would call whatever you used to do dancing.”

“Oh, you got me mixed up with the other antique. I had moves.”

Sam makes a pfft sound, and Bucky can’t help but smile at the nerve.

“You don’t believe me? Is that a dare?”

“Oh, you gonna dance for me Barnes?”

“I’m going to make you eat your words.” Bucky holds his hand out, waiting for Sam to take it. He has no idea how dancing has changed in 70 years… Wakandan dancing was _definitely_ different from what Bucky did in his day… but there was no way he was going to let Sam accuse him of being a bad dancer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a plan for the end of this fic. Won't give a time table but hopefully the next one won't be a month from now. Thanks to anyone whose reviewed, I've been really self conscious about this concept and I'm glad you guys are enjoying it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is weird, but I wanted to do something weird with the end of Infinity War. It may not always make sense but that's largely the point. I'm doing my best to keep it internally consistent. Since A4 comes out in a year and I'm not trying to write this for a whole year, it may no longer be canon compliant in 2019.


End file.
